Lockdowns: For The Pandemic Now, Global Warming Later?
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/11/18/lockdowns-for-the-pandemic-now-global-warming-later/
The lockdown hammer landed hard on California and several other states Monday. At one time it seemed absurd to think government officials’ pandemic orders were a dry run for future attempts to confine and subjugate the country to mitigate global warming. It’s time we rethink that.
Observant and cunning politicians have gone to school since March and are now likely convinced they can use the pretext of a climate emergency to control Americans and break the back of capitalism. No, we’re not likely to see the open-ended lockdowns we’re enduring during the coronavirus outbreak. Those would be too obvious. Politicians can be sneaky sorts so we expect something more subtle and incremental.
For instance, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who clearly relishes having near absolute control over the most populous state in the country, could issue an executive order next summer which says, beginning in January 2022, all businesses except the few deemed essential must be closed every other Friday, and car travel on those days will be restricted solely to those who can demonstrate an absolute need to be on the roads.
Or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose pandemic lockdown rules have been among the most prohibitive, pointless and imbecilic (and have stoked efforts to impeach her), might decide she has the authority to limit the automobile miles driven each month by Michiganders, ration fuel, and dictate thermostat settings in private homes.
We can imagine Democratic governors limiting church attendance in the name of the environment. It’s inessential, according to the belief system of the political left, which places its faith in the god of government, and declares that it will have no other gods before it.
And thus the transformation of America would begin.
Never mind that some researchers say the economic lockdowns have had little effect on global temperatures. Temperatures are not what the global warming scare is about. The objective of climate alarmism is to regulate a free people and take down capitalism and replace it with a collectivist economic system enforced by government.
Our fear is that through its experience with the pandemic lockdowns, the country will be conditioned to just take whatever is dished out by power-hungry officials, elected and unelected. The fact the Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, could say “now is the time to do what you’re told” with minimal condemnation and no demands that he be fired is worrisome.
At least Dr. Scott Atlas, a Trump coronavirus adviser, said in response to Whitmer’s petty tyranny that “the only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept.”
Will we rise up when blue state governors rob of us of our liberties in the name of protecting the climate? Will we refuse to accept the decrees of the Biden-Harris administration when it imposes its version of the Green New Deal on the country; outlaws automobiles that run on fossil fuel; bans fracking, which has provided the country with clean, cheap energy; and traps the U.S. in an international climate agreement that’s expensive, obstructive and at the same time useless?
We don’t want to be pessimists, but we’re unlikely to stand up then unless we stand up now.
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